The Internet is one of the best platforms for bands and The Shades know it. After they put a few songs on Soundcloud, their phones started to work overtime, due to highly interested bookers. “We’ve never ever asked for a gig”. Want to find out what the buzz is about? Made In Shoreditch spoke with frontmen Dean Al-Adday and Hunter Phillipps.
Introducing.. The Shades
The Shades are a four-piece rock band from Hammersmith. Their music can be compared to the sound of The Gaslight Anthem, Tribes or Bruce Springsteen. Although their songs include woohoo-choirs it never comes across polished. The Shades have already had success within the music scene. During a playlist competition their songs were more often listened to than the music from Peace. They’ve already played alongside Pete Doherty. With a wolf as a their mascot and lots of gig’s coming the upcoming months, welcome into The Shades’ world.
Scream!
The Shades try to make rock the way they think it should be played. “We are never trying to put some money making hooks in it, but we are just playing what we feel,” says Al-Adday. “It’s very emotional, but not in a sort of deliberately emotional poetry way. The way I like to think of it is that if Bob Dylan had a better band, that’s the direction we’re going.”
The Shades try to make music with the similar rawness of the first albums from Kings of Leon. “We want our crowd to be moved and feel human. Once we asked a friend to come to our rehearsal and scream whenever you want. The guy lost his voice completely, but that’s what it’s about for us. Moving people.”
Benefits of the Internet
For a six-month-old band, The Shades have already played lots of concerts. The striking part is that they never asked for a gig themselves, because having their music broadcast online was all the publicity they needed. “When we put our songs on SoundCloud we got e-mails from bookers who wanted us to play everywhere,” says Phillipps.
Al-Adday, the big talker of the two, fills his story: “It’s really cool, because we’ve already been playing in different bands for years and people can treat you like shit. But we knew we were on to something good after seeing that the songs from The Shades were played thousands of times. The next day we got a phone call if we wanted to headline at Arts Club and we got a hundred phone calls after that. In the end of 2012 we played a headline show every two days. On a playlist from the bookers from Coachella our music is even more played than that from Peace or 1975.”
Pete Doherty
They also played at the Brixton Jamm on the after party of Pete Doherty. Although it wasn’t their favourite show, they found it cool to meet their role model of rock and roll. “We met him several times. He’s a cool guy and a great lyricist, but it’s always a bit intimidating when you’re with people like him. You can’t help but think that we are basically trying to do what he’s done – we are not talking about the heroin thing, by the way.”
That’s quite something for a six-month-old band, so how would the frontmen explain this? “Although we both work in fashion, we never cared about anything different from our music,” says Phillipps. “For us it’s basically about the m
usic,” Al-Adday fills in. “For instance in my lyrics I want to tell a story, so I can allow people to feel something they would never feel otherwise. The music worked, but the key thing is that we changed the way we looked at things when we started this. In the past we always put ourselves under a lot of pressure to be like the people we were listening to and to adapt to our friends taste. For this project I want every lyric I write to be about me.”
A wolf as mascot
Without the support of their wolf the band wouldn’t have come that far. “I’ve got a wolf at home,” explains Al-Adday. “His name is Poretch. He’s nearly two and I promised him that if he would behave well I’d get him tattooed on my chest, with his head coming up to my neck. He’s become the band mascot and he’s literally the fifth band member. Me and Hunter would sit in my house around three in the morning writing songs with two acoustic guitars with the dog there. And if he likes what he’s hearing he won’t annoy us. If he doesn’t like it, he’ll start biting us and howling.”
The Shades are planning on releasing a record this summer. Want to check out their songs? Check out their page on Facebook and watch the video for their stunning single ‘Circles’.
